After Perfect: A Daughter’s Memoir

The other side of The Wolf of Wall Street story, by a daughter whose father destroyed his family.

The other side of The Wolf of Wall Street story, by a daughter whose father destroyed his family.

Christina McDowell’s unflinching memoir is a brutally honest, cautionary tale about one family’s destruction in the wake of the Wall Street implosion.

Christina McDowell had to change her name to be legally extricated from the trail of chaos her father, Tom Prousalis, left in the wake of his arrest and subsequent imprisonment as one of the guilty players sucked into the collateral fallout of Jordan Belfort (the Wolf of Wall Street ). Christina worshipped her father and the seemingly perfect life they lived … a life she finds out was built on lies. Christina’s family, as is typically the case, had no idea what was going on. Nineteen-year-old Christina drove her father to jail while her mother dissolved in denial.

Since then, Christina’s life has been decimated. As her family floundered in rehab, depression, homelessness and loss, Christina succumbed to the grip of alcohol, drugs and promiscuity before finding catharsis in the most unlikely of places. From the bucolic affluence of suburban Washington, DC, to the A-list clubs and seedy underbelly of Los Angeles, this provocative memoir unflinchingly describes the harsh realities of a fall from grace.

Christina McDowell’s beautiful memoir is a Blue Jasmine story from a daughter’s perspective.